


to steal light from dawn

by focusfixated



Series: to steal light from dawn [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dom/sub, Edgeplay, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Orgasm Denial, Praise Kink, Safeword Use, Service Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 10:24:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20526467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/focusfixated/pseuds/focusfixated
Summary: Aziraphale put his manuscript aside, instruments perched daintily on a knock-off Charles and Diana commemorative dish by an artist who couldn’t seem to decide whether he was painting the Princess of Wales or a young Aled Jones. “I believe the general consensus is that thefunof sexual activity is to enjoy climax, not to be deprived of it,” he said.“Well, youwouldthink that, angel.” Crowley stood up, unfolding himself in a sinewy deployment that Aziraphale followed with his eyes. “A right little hedonist you are, if ever I saw one.”(Or: Aziraphale and Crowley try something new. Crowley learns to ask for what he wants.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the most heartfelt of thanks to my dear [koritsimou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/koritsimou/pseuds/koritsimou), who noticed aziraphale's hat was missing.

“If you wanted to keep me from coming, that’d be fine with me,” Crowley said one evening, a propos of absolutely nothing, except that Aziraphale had been biting repeatedly in the same place on his lower lip for a good half hour, and the worried flesh had been Crowley’s sole focus that entire time.

“Coming – where?” Aziraphale said distractedly, turning a manuscript over in his hands. It was a beautiful work, embossed hardcover with peeling gold leaf that Aziraphale had been painstakingly restoring by hand, the tremulously-thin fibres too delicate for the heat of miracles.

“Anywhere, really.” Crowley uncrossed his legs as he slouched down in the armchair in their living room, shifting in his skin-tight trousers. They were the kind of trousers that were furnished with primarily decorative pockets with inflexible topstitching that Crowley could only just squeeze the tips of his forefingers into. The attempt tugged his jeans tight – tighter – across his crotch. “Anywhere, anytime. I’m not fussy about it.”

Aziraphale paused, bonefolder in hand, a dark green little paintbrush in the other that shone with gold residue. “Do you mean,” he asked carefully, “that is, am I making the assumption you mean this in a sexual context rather than – than you want me to keep you from coming to the tailor’s with me tomorrow?”

“Yes.” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Obviously. This is – I’m talking about orgasms.”

“I see.” Aziraphale put the manuscript aside, instruments perched daintily on a little porcelain receptacle – a knock-off Charles and Diana commemorative dish by an artist who couldn’t seem to decide whether he was painting the Princess of Wales or a young Aled Jones. “May I ask why?”

Crowley shrugged. Just thinking about it, he had started to feel a loose, liquid anticipation in his limbs. “Could be fun.”

Aziraphale turned fully in his desk chair to face him. “I believe the general consensus is that the _fun _of sexual activity is to enjoy climax, not to be deprived of it.”

“Well, you _would _think that, angel.” Crowley stood, unfolding himself in a sinewy deployment that Aziraphale followed with his eyes. “A right little hedonist you are, if ever I saw one.”

“Nothing wrong with the harmless appreciation of earthly pleasures between informed and consenting parties,” Aziraphale murmured, the mantra he repeated whenever Crowley teased him about his indulgences.

“’Course not.” Crowley stepped towards Aziraphale, who watched him, still. He stood over Aziraphale now, between his open thighs where he sat with his back to his desk, an impeccable crease in his well-pressed trousers, though he had undone the top button of his shirt, and it showed the soft dip at the base of his throat. Crowley wanted to put his tongue on it. “Anyway, it’s not _you _who won’t be coming. It’s me.”

“Oh, very self-sacrificial. Shall we prepare the altar?”

Crowley closed his eyes briefly, the image a little too vivid, of laying himself out against the ungiving roughness of stone, Aziraphale’s hands light-edged and searing, pressing into his darkest recesses. Another fantasy for another time. “Angel,” he said, swallowing.

“Why would you _want _that? Being denied?” Aziraphale asked, hands going up to Crowley’s sides, skimming his ribs, lacing warmly over the bare dip of his back where his shirt never tucked in properly, trousers always riding too low.

Crowley shrugged again. He didn’t know what it was, exactly; there was a place in his mind, where paradoxes and contradictory desires intersected and became indistinguishable one from the other; where a little sting of pain and a coil of pleasure sometimes felt like the same thing; where he wanted to give, to serve, but also very much to push, to take, and sometimes those impulses were identical too. “I don’t know. I just want to try it.”

“And what about me?” Aziraphale pushed Crowley’s shirt up, revealing bone-sharp hips, and Crowley felt his cock stiffen as Aziraphale put his face to Crowley’s abdomen, tender and inquiring. “What do I get out of this, out of refusing you?”

Crowley pushed forward into Aziraphale’s touch, and stuttered when he felt Aziraphale kiss him, wet and open-mouthed just above the button of his jeans, where the metal had bitten red marks into his skin. “You’re not refusing me.” His voice came out a little high, a little breathy. “You’re giving me exactly what I want.”

Aziraphale went still, and his fingers, which had found their way down to grip the skinny handful of Crowley’s denim-clad arse, froze in place. His face turned up to Crowley, a soft look of wonder and careful uncertainty there.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and his voice shook, and then all at once he was fumbling with buckles and buttons and the damned, inflexible material of Crowley’s drainpipe jeans, to peel it all down and away, letting Crowley’s cock spring, half-hard, to meet his open mouth.

He made short work of it, enveloping Crowley in lush heat, taking him in and sucking him with relentless, assiduous insistence, bobbing his head back and forth until Crowley was moaning in loud, scattered cries, thrusting forward and coming fast and shocked down Aziraphale’s throat.

“That was,” Crowley said, after a moment, shivering as Aziraphale pulled off but continued to press soft, nerve-teasing kisses up and down his spent cock. “That was the opposite of what we were discussing.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Aziraphale sniffed, and he moved away, finally, to sit back in his desk chair, trousers tenting significantly.

“You like it, though?” Crowley asked. He tucked himself away, but didn’t bother doing his belt buckle or zipper up. “The idea of – of deciding for me. When I get to, you know.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly, pressing the heel of his hand between his legs. “Yes,” he murmured, finally, eyes open but not looking at Crowley. A soft, guilty admission. “I do.”

“Excellent.” Crowley placed a warm palm on Aziraphale’s cheek. Then he smiled, sharp-toothed and bright. “Right, now, do you want to come in my arse or in my mouth?”

\---

It had been a couple of months now, since Crowley and Aziraphale had decided to move to the coast together.

They had upped sticks from London and into a crumble-stoned little cottage in Upper Beeding, a modest affair on the banks of the Ardur which was quiet enough to bring them the peace they had started to long for, old souls that they were, but was also a very reasonable twenty-minute drive from the centre of Brighton.

In the aftermath of the averted apocalypse, Crowley had hoped that a change of pace and scenery might settle things down. Eternity stretched out tentatively once more before them, but they had come too close, too recently, to losing everything, and there was a new, quiet fear that what they had – time, love, each other – could be taken away at any moment.

It manifested in strange ways.

Aziraphale especially, worrier that he was already _before _the events at Tadfield, had become even more obsessed with a multitude of insignificant and imagined tasks, unable to stop fussing for a moment, as if everything might just spin out of control if he weren’t keeping _busy_. 

For one thing, despite never showing a particular predilection for DIY previously, he had suddenly been taken by the notion that their new home absolutely needed renovating, and was spending his afternoons glued to loud, American home decorating show clips on Youtube, emerging, days later, with a vague insistence that they had to make sure the sofa “talked” to the chairs, and that they needed something called a _feature wall_.

(There had been a solid two weeks of vacillation and distress, découpaged magazine articles about colour psychology scattered all over the house, and swatches of embossed curlicue wallpaper samples pinned everywhere from the bay windows in the kitchen to the fireplace in the lounge, after which Aziraphale suggested that the best place for the new, decorative feature wall should, in fact, be their bedroom. Which was what he had said he’d wanted in the first place.

“That’s what you said you wanted in the first place,” Crowley had pointed out.

“Yes but—” Aziraphale’s face had fallen under that cloud of agonised doubt that was ever moments away from misting over his features whenever he was faced with a choice between two or more options. “There were a lot of things to consider. And is it what _you _want?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, neither do I!” Aziraphale had said, voice rising with an edge of panic that always meant he was working himself up over nothing at all. “But it’s our bedroom, Crowley, I don’t want to make the wrong decision.”

“It’s not – it can’t be _the wrong decision_,” Crowley had said, patiently. “There’s no patron saint of painters and decorators. There’s no – objective moral truth about whether, whether green wallpaper is _allowed _in bedrooms, angel. It’s just – whatever you want it to be.”

“Let me just check what the Google says again,” Aziraphale had insisted, voice already fading as he hurried from the room.)

Aziraphale had always been a ditherer. He was a fusser, a fretter, a great big nervous Nellie, hovering anxiously around Crowley like a flustered bird, shilly-shallying over every step forward, issuing agitated platitudes and apprehensive warnings about always being just a little more _careful_.

But Angels, at their core, also had the capacity to be ruthless. Crowley knew _that_ very well. Angels were divinity manifest, agents of God’s judgement, descending onto the earthly planes in unbound, terrorising watchfulness, righteously imparting unto quivering mortals the command, _THOU SHALT NOT_. They had a tendency, in times of strife, towards a steely willingness to lay down the law, and a utilitarian practicality for enacting the greater good with very little interest in relativism.

Which were all different ways of saying that angels could be right stubborn bastards, when they wanted to be.

Crowley was not, historically, a big fan of absolutism. It showed a disappointing lack of imagination. And he liked how his angel had, over time, thrown out his smug protestations about bloody _ineffability_ for an altogether more reasonable inclination for asking questions.

Still. After Aziraphale had changed his mind for the _sixth_ time about the colour accents for their new throw pillows, thrown a fit about it, and then disappeared into Ikea for an actual, literal week, Crowley decided that a little reminder of the power of decisive action might be a good idea.

\---

“It _is_ a nice wall,” Crowley gasped, three days later, when they were in their bedroom and Aziraphale was fucking him beneath it. They’d gone, in the end, with a cottagey William Morris aesthetic that was all elaborate, curling vines, repeated patterns of pendulous fruits and small, hidden birds amongst the flowers. Crowley, despite his tastes running almost exclusively to chrome-finish minimalism, actually found it quite lovely, and somehow comforting to look at. “You made the – _oh, oh fuck_ – the right ch-choice.”

Aziraphale smiled demurely. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Thank you, my dear, I’m glad you think so.” He rolled his hips, a long, deep stroke in, before pulling back shallowly, as Crowley let out a soft moan.

“Th-the pillows are nice too. Very – _oh – _very c-complementary.”

“The lady in the upholstery department recommended the autumn shades.”

“She has a g-good – a good eye.”

“Quite. And I am sorry it took so much _dithering_.” Aziraphale punctured the words with a hard snap of his hips, and Crowley arched and keened.

His fingernails were digging grooves into the soft flesh of Aziraphale’s arms, and he released them with some effort. “No need – _nngh_ – to apologise, angel. I know you like t-to get th-things, things right. As long as you’re h-happy.”

“I do,” Aziraphale agreed. “I am.” He leaned down and kissed Crowley, then, warm and tender, and Crowley wrapped his arms around the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “Still,” Aziraphale murmured against Crowley’s mouth, and then he was pulling up and away, sitting back on his knees, cock slipping out of Crowley’s arse, where Crowley had previously very much been appreciating its presence. “I ought to learn to be more decisive.”

“You ought to—” Crowley repeated, squirming, confused as to why Aziraphale wasn’t putting his very nice cock back inside Crowley immediately. And then, suddenly, he understood. “Oh, angel,” Crowley huffed out a laugh. “Oh, we’re doing this _now_?”

“I’m being decisive, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, primly. And then, voice a little lower, “I’ve decided you’ve had enough.”

Crowley stopped laughing abruptly. The atmosphere had changed. Aziraphale’s gaze on him was steady, not furrowed in worry and doubt for once, but heated and even. “If you say so,” Crowley said, a little breathless. He pushed his arousal to the back of his mind, and reached for Aziraphale’s cock instead, his sole focus now.

“Oh, no, dear,” Aziraphale said, incomprehensibly, and he started to roll away, off the bed, although his cock was still stiff, a flushed-dark curve against the soft white of his belly. “I’ve had enough, too.”

“Angel.” Crowley blinked. “You don’t have to – at least let me—”

“Not right now.” Aziraphale leaned over to give Crowley a kiss, a chaste peck on the lips before standing and gathering his clothes to him with a snap of his fingers. “I have some errands to run.”

“Errands,” Crowley repeated.

“Yes.” Aziraphale, now fully dressed, his cock still an obscene, swollen line in his trousers, placed a hand on Crowley’s cheek. “In the interest of full disclosure and absolute clarity,” he said, as Crowley swallowed past his dry throat, “you are not allowed to touch yourself without my permission, and I forbid you to come until I decide you’re allowed to. I also expect you to maintain an Effort at all times unless I tell you otherwise. If it becomes too much, I want you to clearly say the words _Alpha Centauri_ to me, and we can stop. Understood?”

“Fuck,” Crowley said, feelingly.

“Understood?”

Crowley closed his eyes. His cock pulsed, a bead of fluid trickling down the length, and he shuddered. “Understood.”

“Good.” And then Aziraphale was gone.

Crowley let out a breath and flopped onto his back on the bed, one arm bent behind his head, the other across his hips. He laughed again, disbelieving. His palm was clammy with sweat, a hot-damp imprint on his thigh that suddenly felt like a direct trigger to his cock. It would be so easy to just wrap his hand around it. It wouldn’t take long. He was on the edge already.

He put his fingers in his mouth instead, and bit down hard on his knuckles until his teeth ached. It took him a full half hour to calm down.

\---

Crowley was washing dishes in the sink.

They had polished off a tabbouleh at lunchtime, a generously fragrant serving with pomegranate seeds and parsley from their own garden, and there was a stack of plates and cutlery to attend to. It was an unnecessary activity, this tidying up, when messes could be vanished and dishes popped into hidden dimensions for the sake of storage space, but the repetitive, rote gestures were soothing to Crowley, meditative.

The kitchen was a sanctuary for Crowley.

As much as his and Aziraphale’s bedroom was a place of comfort and intimacy, the kitchen had a forgiving neutrality and a practicality to it that Crowley was drawn to. He had also, despite his six thousand-year lack of interest in food except for the way it disappeared into Aziraphale’s mouth, recently become quite adept and surprisingly enchanted by the notion of cooking, and the kitchen had become like his own personal workshop.

Their bodies required no feeding, so it was an entirely useless and indulgent pastime, but there was something in the creation of dishes, in the slow reduction of liquids to cream-thick sauces, in the flashy broil of stir-fried vegetables, in the precise goldening of an _hachis parmentier_, that satisfied Crowley deeply. Aziraphale’s enjoyment, his delighted expression, the way he both savoured careful bites and gorged himself entirely on his favourite meals, was equally rewarding.

Crowley paused, hands buried in soapsuds. Perhaps thinking about Aziraphale’s approach to food consumption wasn’t ideal right now.

He was feeling a little edgy. It had been a whole week since Aziraphale had committed them to this – this _thing_, this game they had decided to play, and they hadn’t done anything, or spoken of it since. Aziraphale hadn’t felt like sleeping during that time, less prone to the practice than Crowley anyway, so there had been no reason to go into their bedroom together, and they had instead spent their days in the living room and garden, reading, repotting plants, watching television and being frightfully domestic.

But there had been something in Aziraphale’s gaze this afternoon, in the way it lingered, heatedly, on the places where Crowley’s shirt was open, watching the dip of his throat and his olive oil-slick fingers as he dished out helpings of onion, tomatoes and bulgur. He also seemed, to Crowley, more pointed in his degustation, more deliberately provocative in the way his mouth lingered, pursed, around his fork, in the sounds he made when he swallowed and licked his lips.

He made Crowley _want_. Even more so with the way he was making Crowley _wait_.

Crowley rinsed out the serving bowl and put it upside-down in the drying rack. The sun outside was high and bright, an unrelenting source of light and heat that fell in gridded interruptions through the blinds across Crowley’s arms as he worked. And then, softly, another pair of arms were joining his.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured, hugging around Crowley’s waist, bringing their bodies gently together, a slightly sticky warmth behind him in the thick, summer afternoon. “What are you doing, love?”

Crowley lifted his hands, soapsuds dripping down to the elbows. “Crocheting a nightgown, angel, what do you bloody think?”

“Very nice,” Aziraphale said, not listening in the slightest. He was pressed along Crowley’s back, and had started discreetly rubbing the hardening line of his cock against Crowley’s arse.

“Angel,” Crowley said, swallowing, and then Aziraphale was reaching around to find Crowley’s belt buckle, the heavy metal clink of it loud in the countryside quiet of the cottage. He pulled the belt off, allowing access to Crowley’s buttons and zipper, which he also undid, peeling Crowley’s jeans back slowly, opening them to pull out his cock. Crowley’s soapy hands slipped against the slick, chrome sink surface. “What’s – what’s brought this on?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing much. Only that I find it rather difficult to resist you like this.”

“Elbow-deep in fairy liquid?”

Aziraphale chuckled into the line of Crowley’s hair, sensitive against his neck. “Cooking,” he said, with a kiss against Crowley’s skin. “Cleaning.” Another kiss. “Feeding me.”

Crowley let out a moan, Aziraphale’s words going straight to his cock, thickening in the bite of his zipper where Aziraphale had exposed him.

“You’re so _good _to me,” Aziraphale murmured, moving in a slow grind against him. “Providing for me, wanting to _please_ me like you do.”

“Fuck,” Crowley whispered.

“And you _do _like to please me, don’t you?” Aziraphale’s hands went gently to Crowley’s hips, fingers pushing between clammy-hot skin and tight, black denim, easing the jeans down.

“I do,” Crowley said, and his voice was thin, almost a whine, as he felt Aziraphale push his own light, linen trousers down to crumple around his thighs, his cock, hot and hard, nudging at the cleft of Crowley’s bare arse.

“_F-f_uck.” Crowley stuttered forward, trapped by the living heat of Aziraphale’s flesh behind him, and by the chilly, ungiving edge of the sink in front of him. His prick, all the way hard now, skidded against the spillage of soapsuds on the countertop.

Aziraphale smiled. Crowley could feel the press of the angel’s lips against the back of his own neck. His hand reached around to dip into the soapy foam – a sharp, bright, apple-scented froth – and then slipped down, wet and slick, to touch Crowley’s cock.

“Oh, oh, _fuck_.” Crowley bucked forward into Aziraphale’s hot, slippery grip. Goosebumps prickled over his skin, perspiration gathering in the crook of his limbs, under his arms and behind his knees, as Aziraphale jerked him off, tight and slow. “Oh, y-_yes_, angel, keep – k-keep going.”

The damp, sweat-gathered heat between their bodies eased the slide of Aziraphale’s cock against him, a sweet, insistent grind against the swell of Crowley’s arse, slipping between his cheeks, rubbing thickly in the split of him. It felt – it felt so _good_, and Crowley pushed back, pushed forward, whining in anticipation, wanting more.

“Oh, please, _fff_fuck, just there, j-just _there_—”

And then Aziraphale was kissing him sweetly on the neck, just below his ear, and pulling away.

“Wonderful,” he said, not without a little smugness.

“No – I – what? _Angel_,” Crowley whined, trying to push back, trying to turn around and reach for Aziraphale’s cock, but he was out of reach, and Crowley had fairy liquid dripping down his arms.

“I’m going to get some air. Try not to _spill_ everywhere, darling,” Aziraphale added, as water sloshed down the anthracite cabinet doors under the sink, and he nipped forward to give Crowley’s cock one last squeeze for good measure before retreating, humming, from the room.

“Well, _fuck_,” Crowley said, to no one. His fingertips were pruney from the dishwater, and he was stood alone, bare-arsed in the middle of the kitchen, sporting an erection he could do nothing about, achingly hard and unsatisfied. 

Swallowing, Crowley reached with shaky hands for a dishtowel, dried them, then slowly pulled his trousers back up.

\---

On Monday, Aziraphale surprised Crowley in the bathroom, while he was arranging his hair just _so _with some indecently expensive styling pomade, by stepping up behind him and placing his hands on Crowley’s hips. Crowley’s stomach flipped as he met Aziraphale’s eyes, dark and heated, in the mirror. Then Aziraphale dropped to his knees behind Crowley, dragging Crowley’s trousers down as he went, spreading Crowley’s cheeks wide and licking and sucking wetly at his hole without so much as a by-your leave. Crowley was a shaking, shuddering mess within minutes, leaning over the sink, pressed into the mirror, fogging up the glass and crying out with every thrust and drag of the angel’s tongue inside him, cock hard and leaking, eyes rolling back, right on the edge of orgasm – when Aziraphale stood up, licked his lips, and walked out with a smile.

The day after that, while Crowley was doing some well-needed re-alphabetising of his jazz records, both because they had come out of order when they’d moved to the cottage, but also because he was keenly aware of the way Aziraphale, sitting in his armchair, was watching him from the corner of his eye, and he was jittery and needed something to do with his hands. He’d made it all the way to _Louis Prima_ before Aziraphale had snapped the book he was reading shut, and walked over to where Crowley was sitting on the floor. He reached out to hold Crowley’s chin in a gentle but unyielding grip, to tilt Crowley’s head up and smile indulgently at him, and Crowley felt such a vivid rush of heat straight to his cock that he had to close his eyes. The record clattered to the ground.

Aziraphale had bent him face-down over the heavy oak writing desk under the window and fingered Crowley until he wailed, clenching and pushing back against the not-quite-satisfying thickness of Aziraphale’s fingers inside him, gently circling his prostate. That had ended with Crowley’s hands spread damply on the inlaid rosewood, breathing shakily as Aziraphale pulled out, and kissed him tenderly at the bottom of his spine before walking away.

Wednesday and Thursday involved, respectively, a frustratingly aborted blowjob behind the garden shed interrupted by the phone ringing indoors even though the phone _never rang_, and a tight-fisted handjob on the sofa that was just getting really interesting when Aziraphale pulled his hand out of Crowley’s trousers to go switch the radio on because it was seven o’clock and he wanted to listen to _The Archers_.

By Friday night, Crowley felt about ready to vibrate right out of his skin.

They tucked themselves into bed that evening, for the sake of routine more than anything else, and Crowley was about to switch the lights off when Aziraphale dived down under the covers and proceeded to suck the hell out of Crowley’s cock. Crowley hissed and thrashed and keened, trying to fuck deeper into wet heat, trying to chase the bright edge of the orgasm Aziraphale had kept from him all week.

Just as he felt himself teetering on the brink, Aziraphale pulled off with a loud, slick, sucking noise, and Crowley sank his head back into the pillow with a sob of frustration. Aziraphale emerged from under the duvet, dandelion-hair mussed in every direction, mouth red-flushed and swollen, looking extremely pleased with himself.

“Angel,” Crowley breathed, panting, feeling dizzy and crazy and desperate. “Now – you – can I _please_—?”

But Aziraphale said, “That’s enough for now,” in his prim, polite little voice that didn’t disguise the edge of severity there, pushing Crowley away.

Crowley dragged his hands back to himself, crossing them over his chest to tuck under his armpits, shuddering.

It was – infuriating, the way he couldn’t touch. Aziraphale, purveyor of every harmless human indulgence, who delighted in excesses, with his proclivity for fine things, for things that felt _good_, was not only denying Crowley any satisfaction, but had inexplicably come over all _Catholic_ by depriving them both.

It certainly didn’t feel as good as Crowley had thought it would, but he supposed it was what he’d asked for, so he said nothing.

\---

The garden at the back of the cottage was wide and sprawling, larger in square footage by far than the house itself, stretching back into hidden nooks and shaded corners, so that it was impossible to view the entirety from one angle. The sloping gravel pathway and fetchingly outmoded ha-ha wall gave the garden a charming, crooked feel and behind every draping trellis and unfurled rosebush were more places to discover.

The aesthetic, like their house itself, was strongly Aziraphale’s, an expansion of his predilection for fussiness and clutter. Crowley had always favoured space, minimal and clean, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to mind, as Aziraphale put up new bookshelves that overflowed with paperbacks and hardbacks and manuscripts, trails of trinkets and tchotchkes on the windowsill from his trips to every village carboot sale, coming home beaming with armfuls of potted plants that he handed off delightedly into Crowley’s care.

Their place was messy, crammed with joyful bits of purposelessness and self-indulgent knickknacks. It was _full_, but there was nothing of Hell’s stifling closeness there, no sharp-edged protractions to prod and scrape and keep you eternally restless. There was no smothering darkness, here, in their house filled with love, in their own garden, under a wide-open sky.

That afternoon, Crowley was tending to the south end of the garden, where a magnificent spillage of hydrangeas bloomed lustily in a half-shaded area near the fence.

“My, aren’t they doing _well_.”

Crowley turned to give a crooked smile over his shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, angel.”

Aziraphale gave him a perfectly innocent look, arms behind his back. He was wearing – and looking rather pleased with himself about it – a wide-brimmed straw hat, complete with a ruffle-edged sleek black feather stuck in the band. Sun exposure didn’t affect their skin the same way it did humans, which meant he was wearing the hat for entirely aesthetic purposes. He probably thought it made him look jaunty and debonair. “I’m not up to anything,” Aziraphale said, coming closer to peer at where Crowley was trimming back the overgrowth.

“You are. You’re deliberately trying to undo my work here with your loathsome _compliments_. All my efforts, gone to waste.”

“I’m doing no such thing. I _simply _said—”

Crowley prodded a finger at Aziraphale, the tip of it green and earthy. “No. Stop it. The plants are doing perfectly fine on a strict diet of glauconite, frequent watering—”

“—and creative death threats—”

“—and creative death threats which _visibly _yield results—”

“Balance and moderation in all things, my dear. I don’t see why they oughtn’t get a little encouragement, also.”

“Well, _do_ forgive me for not taking gardening advice from someone who believes all pests are equal and should be allowed to live freely and gorge themselves on my geraniums.”

Aziraphale tilted his head in acknowledgement, smiling slightly. He didn’t say what he might have said, once – that all of them were God’s creatures, and deserving of love.

Crowley let them lapse into silence as he turned back to the plants. His secateurs clacked against the thick, verdant foliage amongst which candyfloss-coloured blooms were nestled. The flowers barely trembled at the sight of the blades, arching instead joyfully towards him, towards the sun. It was appalling, really.

“Come here.” Aziraphale’s voice came to him, soft.

Crowley turned. Aziraphale’s arms were open, waiting, and his face was – as it ever was. Kind, and _knowing. _Crowley might have said, once, that that was appalling too. Now, it felt like the only thing worth having.

He put his tools down, wiped his sap-sticky hands on his thighs – he had a rough and threadbare pair of jeans purposefully for gardening – and stepped into the loose circle of Aziraphale’s arms, hands slipping inside Aziraphale’s linen jacket to settle on the swell of his hips.

Crowley had found Aziraphale different, these last few weeks. He seemed surer, more in control. He was less prone to agonising for a half hour every time he had to make a decision and was being positively spontaneous in this choices. He’d been indulgently leaving projects he’d started unfinished, saying they would get round to them when the time was right. There wasn’t as much of a fearful desperation to do everything, and to do it perfectly. Aziraphale seemed to have settled into the idea that they had time, now – time to make mistakes, time to savour each other. Crowley glowed with the knowledge that he had, perhaps, helped.

On the other hand, it had left Crowley wound tight as a clock. Now, there was a constant, desperate thrumming under his skin, a relentless, magnetised pull, drawing every nerve up sharp like iron filings, every time Aziraphale so much as turned his gaze on him, reduced to a wanting, needful thing.

“Kiss me,” Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley launched forward and did as he was asked, knocking off Aziraphale’s ridiculous hat as he went. He kissed hungrily, licking into Aziraphale’s mouth, as far as he could go, tongue sloppy, sliding over the back of Aziraphale’s teeth, pushing hard into the fleshy wetness of his cheeks, against the sensitive topside of his palate. He growled and hissed as he did so, half choking on his own breaths as he made his assault on the angel’s mouth, sucking on his lips in a messy, wet smear, animalistic in his desperation.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale gasped as he pulled back, his hair a scarecrow mess from where Crowley had, unconsciously, threaded his fingers tightly into it, his lips swelled red, his eyes wide and wanting.

Crowley watched him, panting. He felt raw, unpeeled, and all that just from a kiss.

Aziraphale dragged them back together, the line of their bodies twining, limbs curled around each other like strands of DNA trying to reconfigure, and they kissed and kissed with heavy moans and sporadic breaths, until Aziraphale broke off long enough to say, “Down, get – _down_,” and then pushed his tongue back into Crowley’s mouth, where it belonged, and kissed him some more as he eased them both to lie on the grass right next to the hydrangeas.

Hot and distracted, Crowley ended up on his back, knees bound by the tangled restriction of his jeans as Aziraphale wrenched them down, t-shirt rucked up to his armpits, exposing him from chest to thigh, his cock already stiff and curved towards his belly, freshly-mown lawn prickling his back and arse. He was almost certainly flattening an unsuspecting bug or two with his thrashing, but Aziraphale didn’t seem particularly bothered about All Creatures Great and Small at that moment, and was instead focusing on sucking and biting at Crowley’s nipples with shocking voracity.

“Oh f-fuck, fucking h-Hell, fuck me, _oh_,” Crowley babbled, fingers digging into the ground either side of him, feeling the hard earth pile under his nails, desperate for a handhold. Aziraphale was being sloppy, leaving spit-slick trails over Crowley’s chest, using the wetness to ease the slide of his fingers as he sucked one nipple and rolled and pinched the other, every pain-edged squeeze sending shocks through Crowley that tangled into an electric highway of arousal that sang all across his skin. “Angel, angel, _angel_.”

Aziraphale pulled off with a wet smack of his lips. “Is there something you want, love?” he asked, voice low.

Crowley pressed a shaky hand over his eyes. “A-anything, oh _fuck_, plea_sss_e.”

“Anything?” Aziraphale sat up consideringly, looking down at Crowley lain next to him, a debauched mess already, nipples thick and puffy, chest straining, sweat gathering on the insides of his thighs, cock leaking slow pulses of fluid onto his belly, and Aziraphale hadn’t even been _near _it yet. “Do you want my fingers?” Aziraphale asked, trailing them across Crowley’s exposed knee, over the dry skin at the front, and then dipping lightly underneath to the hidden crook at the back of it, and _Jesus Christ _and _Satan himself_ when had that place become so painfully erotic?

“Y-yes, God, Hell, fuckinggg – _please_, oh _pleassse_.”

Humming, Aziraphale dragged the pads of his fingers up Crowley’s left thigh, higher and higher to the crease of his pelvis, tantalisingly close, then dipped down in between where Crowley’s legs were clenched tightly together. “Spread,” Aziraphale said, clicking his tongue when Crowley didn’t do as asked immediately, prodding a little harder to part them.

With a whine, Crowley let his thighs open, as far as he could still constricted by the jeans that had slipped to a tangle around his shins, tilting his pelvis up, practically begging.

“Oh, lovely,” Aziraphale breathed, and he reached down to cup Crowley’s sac, lifting his balls gently up, feeling the heft of them, rolling them in his palm, as Crowley squirmed and panted and tried not to flail. As Aziraphale’s hand crept further, thumb pressing up against the velvet hot skin just behind his balls, following the crease of him to push in and up between his cheeks, Crowley flinched like he’d been shocked, and let out a high moan.

“Oh, th-there, right_ there_.”

“Here?” Aziraphale asked, all innocence though his voice was warm with fondness and a light, teasing joy. He crooked two fingers and stroked against Crowley’s hole, dry and a little rough, pressing slightly _in_ to catch on the rim.

“Y-yes,” Crowley managed to stutter out. He wanted desperately to just roll over, stick his arse in the air, to let Aziraphale push in and fuck him with those thick, blunt fingers, shove them deep as they could go. But Aziraphale had placed a hand on his abdomen, keeping him in place, and he felt pinned by that as much as Aziraphale’s gaze on him, watching him, taking in his display.

And then Aziraphale pulled his hand away.

“Shitting _Christ_,” Crowley swore.

“Now, none of _that_,” Aziraphale admonished, swatting Crowley on the thigh. “Can’t you contain yourself a little better?”

Crowley leaned up onto his elbows and gave Aziraphale a _look_. He was covered in sweat, and he thought he could feel a couple of ants crawling unpleasantly over his clammy skin. Either that or it was the pins-and-needles prickle of trapped bloodflow, directed away from his limbs and focused entirely on his cock, flushed purple and rock-hard against his belly. “_Angel_.”

“Yes?”

“_Touch_ me.”

“Like this?” Aziraphale put two fingers, just under the head of Crowley’s cock, and rubbed, light as anything, as if he were softly scritching a fucking bunny rabbit under its chin. Crowley let out a frustrated groan, almost a sob, and thrust his hips forward, trying to get _more_. “No?” Aziraphale said, all cloying innocence as he took his hand away. “Then how about like this?” And then he put out one finger to touch the very tip of Crowley’s cock.

“Ohgod,” Crowley whispered, trembling. “Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod.”

Aziraphale was making tiny, teasing circles over the slit with one single finger, rubbing slowly, no real pressure or rhythm, just an excruciating touch that had Crowley panting and hissing and rocking his body from side to side trying to get away and come closer at the same time. His cock throbbed steadily with the pulse of his heartbeat, leaking a pearl-sticky stream.

“Lovely,” Aziraphale said, softly. He pulled his finger away, and a spider-silk thread of precome followed, sagging wetly from the tip of Crowley’s cock. Crowley watched hazily as Aziraphale put his finger between his lips and sucked, smearing the taste over his tongue.

Crowley let his head drop back into the grass with a thud. He couldn’t take it anymore. He was going to discorporate.

And then the infuriating touches ceased, and Aziraphale lay his chin instead on Crowley’s thigh. Crowley lifted his head weakly to see the angel peering up at him through blonde eyelashes. “Do you want to come yet?” Aziraphale asked.

“I—” Crowley froze. His cock was aching, his balls heavy and tight, even his skin was shuddering with currents of white-sharp arousal. Every part of his body was yearning for release. “I want—”

“Yes?”

Crowley felt the sweat on his forehead plastering tendrils of red hair there, how it gathered behind his neck and at the backs of his knees, at the rucked-up tangle of his jeans where they’d been pushed down and forgotten. Drips of it ran from under his arms, on his upper ribs, at the small of his back and in the crack of his arse. He was reduced to the sensations Aziraphale was pulling out of him, and he didn’t know what he wanted. He opened his mouth, and all he could do was whine.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Aziraphale said, kindly, when it became clear Crowley couldn’t. “I think you want to show me how good you can be. I think you want to show me how much you can take. And I think that you want me to reward you for how _well _you’ve done, later.”

Crowley let out a long, low moan, feeling the caress of Aziraphale’s words, his cock pulsing with an arousal so sharp he could barely focus on anything else. “Y-yes,” he managed to stutter out.

“Good,” Aziraphale said. He lifted his chin away from where it had been digging into the lean meat of Crowley’s thigh. Nothing touched him now but the earth at his back. “You’ve done _exceptionally _well so far, my dear. Just a little longer, now. Tomorrow night, perhaps. You can hold out, can’t you?”

Crowley said nothing, just squeezed his eyes shut, panting.

Aziraphale stood up, shadow cast over Crowley, the dipping sun just behind his head, and when Crowley opened his eyes Aziraphale was entirely haloed in gold.

Dazed, Crowley lifted a hand, and let Aziraphale hoist him to his feet.

“That’s it, that’s good, come on now, darling,” Aziraphale murmured as he tugged Crowley’s jeans back up, letting Crowley lean weakly against him. Crowley let out small, pitiful moans, breath hitching wetly with unshed sobs as Aziraphale carefully buttoned his jeans back up, leaving Crowley’s cock trapped in the waistband so the head peeked out above the zipper, held tight against his belly by the belt that Aziraphale buckled for him. He tugged Crowley’s t-shirt down to cover him. “You’re doing so well, love.”

Crowley groped for Aziraphale desperately, still shaking. His mind was a-whirr, he felt untethered, like he was floating. He wanted – he still _wanted_. Without thinking, his hands pawed at Aziraphale’s clothes, seeking something, skin, or some living hot part of him, that he could touch, that could ground him somehow. Fingers scrabbled ineffectually at shirt buttons, and skidded down over sandy-coloured slacks.

When his hands made contact with the cloth-covered heat of Aziraphale’s cock he almost cried out in relief. Aziraphale hadn’t let Crowley touch him in weeks, and it was deeply, soulfully, axis-rightingly _good_ to feel the evidence of his pleasure there, hard between his legs, to hear Aziraphale’s soft, _oh_, exhaled into his ear.

Crowley trembled. He wanted to drop to his knees there and then, to push his face against the angel’s cock and let it rub against his cheek, press into his mouth, breathe hot and wet all over it and suck messily through Aziraphale’s trousers, soaking the cloth with his spit until Aziraphale was beside himself and would wrench the fastenings open to shove hot and unencumbered between Crowley’s swollen, parted lips, to fuck his mouth and come down throat.

“Ah, ah,” Aziraphale admonished softly, and he pulled Crowley’s hand away. “Not right now.” He kissed Crowley on his damp, furrowed brow, tender as anything, but Crowley felt the rejection like a rift of longing rending the surface of his skin. “Later, love.”

As Aziraphale walked away, Crowley sank to the ground. It was hard under his knees, and the feeling of loneliness was shocking.

\---

Much later, when the sun had come down and the long August shadows had decayed into evening twilight, Crowley came indoors. Lamplight spilled from the library into the corridor, soft-edged and inviting, and yet Crowley hesitated. He couldn’t have said why.

Without really meaning to – or, at least without consciously acknowledging any thought process that led him there – Crowley’s body began to smooth out, limbs repatriated to his serpent form, mind simplifying to a more focused train of thought, a blissful unburdening of all the humanlike niggles that prodded and plagued his brain.

If it weren’t for the wonder that was being able to hold hands, interlocked fingers and palms pressed like a supplication together, Crowley sometimes thought he would prefer to stay a snake. Certain things were simpler.

Aziraphale went still as Crowley came slithering into the room, belly frisking softly across the hardwood floor, cool on his scaleless underside.

“Crowley,” he said, his mouth holding an _O _shape of surprise, light consternation on his brow. “Everything alright?”

Crowley raised up, swaying slightly, a soft hiss on his tongue but no words. His head cocked as he watched Aziraphale watch him, and then he nodded slowly.

Aziraphale pursed his lips, and then put the book he was holding down on the rosewood desk. He turned in his chair, spread his thighs slightly and opened his arms.

Grateful, Crowley slithered over and twined with perhaps more force than he ought up Aziraphale’s leg, squeezing hard around each warm thigh as he looped his coils into Aziraphale’s lap. His upper body nosed headfirst at the sides of Aziraphale’s jacket, pushing them aside and burying his beady face into Aziraphale’s chest, the angel’s body heat soaking with ethereal conduction into Crowley’s.

Crowley flickered out a tongue to taste the air. Aziraphale’s scent, old books and wood polish, under the slightly stale tang of summer sweat, was strongest here, where he buried his reptilian snout into Aziraphale’s soft neck. There was something sweet and heavy hanging over him too, and Crowley scented it greedily, basking in the heightened sense of it, close as he could get to it.

Aziraphale stroked the hard-edged crown of Crowley’s head, then kissed it with dry lips, and Crowley sighed, a wordless, sibilant hiss.

“Are you going to bed tonight, love?” Aziraphale murmured after a moment.

“_I will if you carry me_.”

Aziraphale chuckled, and Crowley felt it vibrate through his skin. He tightened his coils compulsively, as if he could trap the sound, the sensation of Aziraphale’s happiness, inside his own body.


	2. Chapter 2

_Stars wheeled overhead in spectacular, burning configurations; a wild, cosmic dance through the heavens, streams of milky-bright galaxies winding like glowing snakes in the infinite darkness. In the centre, a molecular tangle of primitive consciousness, dormant and swollen with unbounded potential. Around it, an interweaving chainlink of benevolence, uncorporeal energies holding invisible hands, emanating a tender watchfulness, waiting for the great leap forward—_

_Crowley was there too, burning with the rest, sulfuric heat and ash-taste in the mouth he didn’t have yet. There was no pain. He had no form, no surface, he was only a space in the ether around which other space gathered, and he was drawn towards the heart of a star, a widening wheel of fire, a question sloping its way, through the dark, towards an answer. _

_But the universe thundered on, indifferently cruel. As clouds gathered in new, broken-open skies, the centre loosened, and they were all of them torn apart, flung through the limitless unknown, and though they held on with teeth and claws and desperately bestial accessions that they didn’t yet know how to use, they were falling, falling, falling—_

Crowley woke up with a jolt, legs kicked out under him and a garbled shout stuck in his throat. The sheets were a tangle around him, wrapped around his ankles and knees, pyjama bottoms twisted uncomfortably. There was sweat, unpleasant, unwelcome, inconveniently human all over his corporeal form – he was not an ageless entity floating untethered outside of time and space, but a body-shaped, earthwalking demon that lay, in bed, next to an angel.

Crowley took some deep breaths, more for the mental desire to focus than the need to expand his mostly optional lungs. The dream, or the memory, whatever cryptic visitation had descended on him while his brain went into its restive state, was starting to recede like a wave retreating from the shore, and he was left only with a feeling, a wakeful unease in his mind and limbs.

Of course, he was hard, too.

Crowley closed his eyes briefly, as the heavy ache between his legs surged, like it had only been waiting for him to wake up and acknowledge the predicament, cock tenting the silken front of his black pyjama bottoms.

It was awful. The desperation and want was one thing, but this insistent, throbbing sensation in the middle of the night when his skin was still sticky from strange dreams, was an unpleasant feeling, and a lonely one, too.

He rolled over onto his front, and bit his lip as his cock rubbed against the sheets, trying to reconcile the emotional ache in his chest with the physical pleasure of friction and pressure against him. He was all over the place, too warm and clammy, the night air chilling him at the same time, head a jumble of thoughts and half-remembered things. And he was so frustratingly turned on, he was almost angry with it.

Trying not to let out the hiss that had gathered on the front of his forked tongue, his snakelike features more prominent at night when his effort to contain them slipped, Crowley thrust his hips a little, grinding into the mattress, just enough to get some relief, to chase that bright spark of good feeling out of the tar-sticky bad ones in his head.

“Crowley.”

Crowley froze. His prick was throbbing, a wetness gathering to stain the front of his pyjamas, and he was suddenly aware that Aziraphale’s previously soft, steady breaths had stopped. “Yeah,” Crowley whispered.

“What are you doing, love?”

“Nothing.” Crowley felt bizarrely guilty, the beginnings of a clenched, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was just – still so _hard_, he was dizzy with it.

“Nothing?” Aziraphale repeated sceptically, and Crowley saw him out of the corner of his eye, lifting himself up onto his elbow, before scooping the sheets back, kicking them down the bottom of the bed, leaving Crowley lying face down, exposed. “It looks to me like you’ve decided to take matters into your own hands.”

“No,” Crowley said, his face burning, though Aziraphale wouldn’t see it in the dark. “I was just—”

“Just what?”

Crowley blew out a breath, then rolled onto his back to stop himself from moving against the bedsheets. “Just dreaming,” he muttered.

Aziraphale paused a moment, and as Crowley glanced towards him, he could see Aziraphale’s calm, steady appraisal. He moved towards Crowley, a shuffle that caused his nightshirt to fall off one shoulder, exposing the pale skin to the moonlight that filtered, dusty and silver-edged, through their uncurtained windows. “What kind of dreams?” Aziraphale asked.

“Can’t remember,” Crowley said. “It was – loud. Or, not _loud_, but – big. I don’t know.”

“A nightmare, then?”

“Can’t remember now. I felt – lonely. Alone. Something.”

Aziraphale’s face softened. He put a hand to Crowley’s chest. Crowley could feel the grounding, spreading heat of it on his skin, and his heart started to beat, reflexively, underneath it. “It’s alright,” Aziraphale said. “I’m here.”

Crowley closed his eyes as Aziraphale’s hand pressed over his sternum, then swept languidly downwards, over his stomach, bunching his pyjama top out of the way to caress the bare skin. “It’s alright,” he kept repeating, soothing, his hand making longer, wider motions with every pass, allowing Crowley to loosen, to unravel, to be subdued, until he reached down and covered Crowley’s cock with one warm, large palm.

“_Fuck_,” Crowley gritted out, arching into the touch, chasing the feel of it, how the touch had scattered away the lingering darkness. “Do – do that again.”

Aziraphale obliged, hand coming up over Crowley’s pyjama-clad cock, holding it and giving it a gentle squeeze. Crowley let out a tight, quiet sound. He desperately wanted Aziraphale to push his trousers down and out of the way and take his cock firmly in hand, to stroke it hard and fast. But all Aziraphale did was massage the length of it with his fingers through Crowley’s trousers, deliberate and gentle, trailing to the tip and rubbing gently with just his thumb against the head of Crowley’s cock, precome soaking through the silken material.

“Angel,” Crowley said weakly, as Aziraphale kept rubbing circles at the tip. “Az-Aziraphale, _please_—”

Aziraphale hummed, softly palming Crowley’s cock, unhurried and directionless, just touching, indulging himself. Crowley moaned and twisted his head towards Aziraphale to watch him, to see the gentle blush on his cheeks, the way his other hand was pressed between his own legs, grinding against the heel of it, controlling the pleasure for both of them. Crowley’s tongue flickered out to touch his dry lips, and he could taste the smell of arousal in the air, the heady, dark waves of it coming from Aziraphale.

He reached out, fingers twitching towards the hem of Aziraphale’s nightshirt, but Aziraphale batted his hand away. “No,” he said.

Crowley froze, his heart in his ribs, not beating, but swollen hard and painful somehow. He pulled away, abruptly, out of Aziraphale’s reach, curling in on himself.

“Crowley, what—” Aziraphale paused, then came up to his elbows. “Is everything all right?”

“I can’t—” Crowley could feel something rough and bloated distending him, distressing, like a bad stomachache of misdigested feelings.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale looked fretful, unsure, and Crowley didn’t _want_ that expression on Aziraphale’s face. That had been the whole _point_. “Do you want – you can say the words. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t want to,” Crowley said miserably.

“Then I will. _Alpha Centauri_. There, I said it.”

Crowley buried his face in his pillow.

There was silence for a moment, only the ticking of the clock punctuating the emptiness with rhythmic, indifferent clicks. Crowley felt a strange, humiliating regret steal over him, though what for, he couldn’t tell.

“I don’t understand,” Aziraphale said, worry in the quiver of his voice. “I know this is – I knew it could become too much – that the emotions might be a lot, I was prepared for that, that’s why we had the words, but this isn’t – something isn’t right.”

Crowley pulled the pillow off his face. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It _does_ matter. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I don’t – I _do_ want this,” Crowley muttered. “I _asked _for it—”

“You didn’t _ask _to be made to suffer. You haven’t enjoyed this. It’s been _hurting_ you.” Aziraphale sighed, a harsh, upset breath. “And you certainly didn’t ask me to be the cause of your suffering.”

Crowley felt a flush burn him from his cheeks and over his chest, a deeply uncomfortable crawl across his skin. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t,” Aziraphale said, more gently. He shifted to sit next to Crowley, his knee touching Crowley’s arm, and Crowley exhaled, loosening the stiffness in his lungs.

They sat together, quiet, letting the unease trickle away to the ticking of the clock.

“I may have – been unclear,” Crowley said, haltingly, after a moment. He looked sideways up at Aziraphale. “I don’t want – it’s not just the, the denial, you know, by itself, that I – that I want. I just want to see you – to see _you_ pleased. I want your – pleasure, to come first. Before mine. Or instead of mine, I don’t know, it all kind of becomes the same. But – you weren’t letting me. You were keeping yourself from – from me.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said.

“Yeah.” Crowley slunk down further onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. “Try to make sense of that one.”

Aziraphale said nothing. His hand skimmed up Crowley’s flank, up over his ribs that were expanding fretfully under his thin, pale skin, up to the sharp jut of his shoulder, and onto his cheek. Then he leaned down, gentle and carefully slow, as if Crowley were a spooked animal, and kissed him.

Crowley exhaled into Aziraphale, relief letting his shoulder sag, letting his muscles unclench. Aziraphale’s tongue pressed softly into him, a slow, tender exploration of his lips, the jagged line of his sharpened teeth, the warm, wet cavern of his mouth. He slid a hand under Crowley’s ribs, coming up behind his back, the other joining it, and pulled them close together, Aziraphale’s soft, giving flesh eroding all of Crowley’s sharp angles.

“Darling, darling, I’m—” Aziraphale said, and his voice was thick with emotion, cluttered with unsaid things. He kissed Crowley again, and again, deep as he could go, licking and sucking at his mouth with tender desperation, as if he were trying to draw poison from a wound. His cock was a hardening line, nudging just underneath Crowley’s sac where they were joined together, and Crowley felt a fierce, blissful joy at the sensation.

“Angel,” he gasped, pulling his mouth away, and Aziraphale blinked at him, eyes hazy and bright, lips spit-slicked and puffy. “Please, can I—”

“You can, oh my dear, of _course _you can,” Aziraphale said, and he sat back and pulled up his nightshirt, naked and pale underneath, and laid himself out on the sheets. When Crowley made a needful, hungry noise, he breathed, “I know, I know.” His hand grasped the base of his cock, thick and flushed, and Crowley felt his heart stutter, and his lips parted in anticipation. “I’m all yours, love.”

Shuddering, feeling a bone-deep heat suffuse him entirely, Crowley slunk over to Aziraphale, limbs shaky, crawling across the space of the bed to fold himself, bent and grateful, between the thick, pillowy expanse of Aziraphale’s thighs, nosing desperately at the root of his cock, breathing in his scent and extending his tongue to lick, hot and greedy, at the soft stretch of skin behind his balls.

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale breathed, spreading his thighs wider, giving Crowley access. “Oh, that feels _wonderful_.”

His mouth wet and open, Crowley kissed his way up Aziraphale’s cock, licking and mouthing and letting it probe his lips. This was good, this was _right_, how could he have let Aziraphale believe he had to deny him _this_, the sticky-damp trail of precome across his cheek as he rubbed his face against Aziraphale’s hard prick, an offering for him, his for the taking.

He loosened his jaw, moving up to the top of Aziraphale’s cock, and swallowed him down, as deep as he could go, spit trailing from his lips as he pulled off and back down again, throat working, the spongy head of it pushing up into his mouth.

“Oh, _oh_.” Aziraphale was trembling above him, holding himself still, all good manners even as Crowley swallowed around him again, tongue batting against the rigid underside of his cock. “Oh, Crowley, just like _that_, oh, _darling_, yes—”

Crowley pulled off with a hard, messy slurping sound, his lips feeling red-raw, and _good_. He ignored his own cock, which had started to thicken again between his legs, focusing only on drinking in the sight of Aziraphale before him, soft and dewy with sweat, curls sticking to his temples and the tender stretch of his neck, prick red-flushed against the white-soft curve of his belly. “Angel,” Crowley said, his voice rough. “Can you—”

Dazed, Aziraphale was looking down at him through his own legs, with a gaze so hot and keen that Crowley felt as if the skin was being peeled from him. With a whimper, he bent his head, neck exposed, his shoulderblades tense and knotted under his skin. Then he looked up again, eyes wide and mouth open, hoping, _willing_ Aziraphale to understand—

“What do you want, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked quietly. “Ask me.”

Crowley shuddered, heat creeping down his face and neck, his whole body. “Come on – on m-my face. Please,” he added, voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes,” Aziraphale breathed. “Of course.” And he took his own cock in hand, fist sliding easily over the spit-slick length, the dark-flushed head poking through the grip of his fingers as he thrust his hips.

Crowley felt himself unravel, a sigh pushed from his lungs as he closed his eyes and waited.

When Aziraphale came, he let out a long, low moan, a sound of pleasure and deep satisfaction that Crowley felt to his very core, and he emptied himself in a pulsing, wet release, all over Crowley’s face, the slick, hot fluid marking scalding, wet ropes across his skin, drips of it trailing across his open, swollen mouth.

He felt euphoric.

When he opened his eyes, lashes sticky with Aziraphale’s spend, Aziraphale was looking back at him, a swathe of blushing pink all over him from his thighs to his cheeks, sated, glowing, beautiful. _Look at you_, Crowley thought, dazed.

“Look at you,” Aziraphale said, in a low, awed voice. He sat up and reached towards Crowley, wiping his come away with his fingers, over Crowley’s cheeks, down to press tenderly against Crowley’s mouth. With a whimper, Crowley parted his lips, sucking Aziraphale’s slick-wet fingers down, chasing the taste of him until he was clean.

“Thank you,” Crowley mumbled, Aziraphale’s thumb still pressed in the centre-point of his bottom lip.

Aziraphale just looked at him, and his gaze was both soft and searing. “Come here,” he said.

Crowley shifted up, laying down so his back was to Aziraphale’s chest, pressing all along him, skin sweat-sticky and warm, Aziraphale’s soft cock nestled against Crowley’s backside. With a sigh, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s waist, and mouthed the top knob of his impossible, winding spine.

“Try and sleep, now, love,” Aziraphale said, even though neither of them needed to. It was just another indulgence, a way to pass the time, a humanlike surrender into soft nothing, a balm for the rawness of the days.

Crowley’s cock was still hard, but without the strung-tight desperation of before. It throbbed, pleasurably, a background ache he could ignore as he focused instead on the fleshy give of Aziraphale’s belly behind him, the tangle of their feet under the sheets that Aziraphale had pulled back over them, the warmth of the angel’s palm over the beat of his heart.

\---

In the morning, Crowley woke up to see Aziraphale staring down at him, already awake.

Crowley blinked, eyes a little gluey and sore under the brightness of the early light that filtered into their bedroom.

“I was thinking,” Aziraphale said, and he took one of Crowley’s hands, thumb pressed against his wrist, following the blue-soft impression of veins under skin. “I ought to apologise for my behaviour these last few weeks.”

Crowley sat up to his elbows. His tongue was thick and dry and clicked in his throat as he swallowed. “Ought you?”

“I was selfish. I thought – you asked me to leave you wanting, and I was happy to do so. To prolong it. I – took it too far, perhaps.”

“You were only indulging me,” Crowley said, slowly. His head was still a little achey and wooden from sleep. “It’s okay. I wasn’t clear in what I was asking for.”

A clouded, troubled look passed over Aziraphale’s face. “Maybe,” he said. “But your – desire for me. It’s _intoxicating_, Crowley. I’m not clear-headed when I’m around you.”

Crowley let out a self-deprecating huff of laughter. “Well. Me neither.”

“But you’ve always been less _afraid_ than I. You – open yourself out, for me. You always have.” Aziraphale smudged a thumb across Crowley’s cheekbone. “And there’s so much I would be willing to take from you. So much I _want _from you. I worry I’ll burn you out.”

Crowley felt his breath stutter. His hands were gripping Aziraphale’s pale forearms, and he let go, afraid suddenly of imagined fingertips leaving charred imprints on his skin. “Isn’t that a demon’s job?”

But Aziraphale followed his movement, and took Crowley’s hand back in his. “My dear,” he said, lacing their fingers together, “I have never considered you a danger to me. I, on the other hand—”

“Never,” Crowley interrupted, fiercely, and he pulled Aziraphale towards him so they lay chest to chest, facing each other, and his yellow eyes bored into the depths of Aziraphale’s, no reflection there, only the spatial expanse of the whole universe. “_Never_, angel.”

Aziraphale looked at him, the weight of something limitless and indefinable behind his gaze. He leaned down and kissed Crowley’s forehead, soft lips pressed tender against his skin.

“I don’t want to control you, Crowley,” he said, softly. “I want to _serve _you.”

Crowley shuddered, the length of his whole body, and he felt his guts – an otherwise useless set of organs – twist sharply at Aziraphale’s words. “Well,” he said, haltingly. “Same, to be honest.”

“So what do we do?” Aziraphale said with a light laugh. “Shall we just go back to normal?” He shifted back and sat up, straddling Crowley, the weight of his thighs bracketing Crowley’s hips. “I had no complaints, previously.”

“I – I still like the idea of it,” Crowley said, cautiously. “The, uh, anticipation. I like it when you decide—” He skimmed a hand over the curve of Aziraphale’s belly, to the warmth of his chest. “But – your pleasure. You enjoying yourself. You’re so good at it. And you bring it out of me, better – better than I could. I want that most of all.”

“Then I shall indulge you, my dear,” Aziraphale said, and he brought the soft, sensitive skin on the inside of Crowley’s wrist to his lips. “And I shan’t keep myself from you. There’s nothing I want more than to give you what you want.”

Crowley let out a faint sound.

For a moment, Aziraphale just looked at him, smiling, benevolent, radiating whatever goodness gave him what ordinary people who met him called _a sunny disposition _and felt warmed by his light, though they couldn’t have known why. Then he reached over his shoulder, gathered up his nightshirt, and pulled it up and over his head to drop, discarded, onto their bedroom floor.

Crowley swallowed. It was new, in the scheme of things, in their long, shared history, to be allowed this. To see Aziraphale, _all_ of him, not buttoned-up and clammed-shut, not pressing his lips together for fear of what would spill out, not flexing his fingers nervously on the fastening of his cravat, trying to pull himself together. Here he was, open, giving, exposed. Crowley wasn’t sure he would ever tire of it, of the way Aziraphale smiled, unwound, his soul and flesh bared without fear.

With trembling hands, Crowley skidded his palms up Aziraphale’s thighs, up to the juncture of his hips.

“That’s good,” Aziraphale murmured. “Keep going.”

Crowley moved up, to the places where Aziraphale’s flesh curved and spread, the gentle pull of gravity making dips and valleys of his belly and abdomen, and Crowley touched those too, fingers travelling up to his chest, to the soft peaks of his nipples that hardened under Crowley’s touch, and then down again, slow and searching, to the stiffening cock between his legs.

“Oh.” Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly.

“I can touch you?” Crowley asked, voice a little hoarse.

Aziraphale’s eyes opened, and he smiled. “As much as you like.”

Crowley felt his cock stir where it laid against his thigh, trapped behind Aziraphale. He reached up to lick his own palm, making it as wet as he could, feeling himself flush at the way Aziraphale was watching him, dark-eyed and wanting, and then reached down to grasp Aziraphale’s cock, long fingers folding around it in a firm and tender grip.

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale sighed. “That’s good.” He thrust forward, prick pushing through Crowley’s tight fist, head slipping through his fingers, slick and wet, and Crowley felt a wild beating in his chest, a satisfaction that started deep in his bones and sang along his nerves with every soft groan Aziraphale made as he moved, open and obvious in his arousal, letting Crowley _see_.

“Use me,” Crowley said, suddenly. Breathless, unthinking.

Aziraphale paused, eyes widening a fraction. “Are you – sure?”

“I’m s-sure. Use me to get off. _Please_. Need to see – need to see you come.”

Aziraphale spread his palm across Crowley’s chest, and then bent to kiss him there. “As you wish.”

Without getting up from his position atop Crowley’s thighs, Aziraphale leaned over to the bedside cabinet on his side of the bed, and lifted a small, clear bottle of oil, that he brought back clutched in his palm. Like preparing food and washing the dishes, there was something in the rote, ritualistic routines of humankind, their ordinary, base carnality that called to some fundamental part of themselves that preferred physical contact over ephemeral magic.

Also, Crowley liked to watch.

Aziraphale uncorked the bottle, and poured a generous amount of oil over his fingers, some of it dripping onto Crowley’s abdomen. “Sorry,” Aziraphale said, not looking sorry in the slightest, and then he reached behind himself, and with a sigh, pushed his fingers in.

Crowley watched, hungrily. Aziraphale’s brow furrowed in a faint frown, eyes closed as the muscles in his shoulders flexed, straining forward and pushing back as he fucked himself on his fingers, letting out quiet exhalations of breath.

“Angel,” Crowley said, voice tight. “I w-want to hear you. Tell me how it – how it feels.”

Aziraphale moaned, his movements faster, more frantic. “Good, _oh_, so good, getting myself ready for you, my dear, ready to take you inside me, it’s going to feel, _oh_—”

Crowley hissed, wordlessly. He arched, cock straining and nudging up against where Aziraphale’s fingers disappeared into his hole.

“_Yes_.” Aziraphale reached down, oil-slick hand taking hold of Crowley’s prick and rubbing the head of it between his cheeks, letting out short, cut-off moans as he guided it in, gently, slowly, the velvet heat of him swallowing up Crowley’s cock inch by inch. “Oh, _oh_,” Aziraphale gasped, sweat shining on the soft surface of him, and then Crowley was fully seated inside.

“_A-angel_.”

“I’m here,” Aziraphale said. He was still a moment, head bowed, breathing, and Crowley waited too, tense and wound tight as a coil, feeling the heat of Aziraphale around him. Aziraphale pressed his hands to Crowley’s abdomen, the concave dip of it below his straining ribs. “You feel – perfect, love, so perfect for me.”

“Ah – Aziraphale,” Crowley groaned, straining. “I can’t – I – you need to—”

“Hush,” Aziraphale said, and his eyelids fluttered closed in concentration as he took Crowley’s hand and folded it around his own cock, his palm covering it, guiding Crowley’s movement. “Just – like this.”

Crowley could only watch helplessly as Aziraphale took control and fucked his cock in and out of Crowley’s fist as he held it, bucking forward with short, keening moans, pushing back onto Crowley’s cock inside him, small, tight movements that were barely enough. Crowley drew his legs up, knees bent, feet slipping against the sheets as he writhed. He was trapped by Aziraphale’s weight above him, not able to find purchase to fuck up into him, forced instead to lie on his back and let Aziraphale take his pleasure, let the angel grind on his cock with a tight, searing heat that felt wonderful and awful in equal measure, bringing him closer and closer to the edge but never quite over.

“That’s good,” Aziraphale was panting now, rocking back and forth as he babbled, “feels so good inside me, your cock in me, just how I like it, so _good_ for me, and your hands, your fingers on me, Crowley, I’m so close, I’m so _close_—”

“Please,” Crowley whispered, a supplication, a soul-deep, guttural _need_.

“_Oh_,” Aziraphale gasped. “I’m going to come, I’m going to—” And then he let out a long, low moan, clenching tight around Crowley, _Jesus_, his cock jerking hard in the cage of Crowley’s fingers, trapped and held there by Aziraphale’s palms cradling his own, a mess of come dripping wetly from the tangle of their joined hands, striped across Crowley’s stomach and chest.

Aziraphale sighed deeply, satisfaction in the hush of his breathing, head bowed and eyes closed, glowing almost in his contentment. When he opened his eyes, soft and blurry with pleasure, kind and _approving_, Crowley felt a spike of arousal so deep it was like being nailed through with it.

“Angel,” he said, voice thin and pitiful. “I – I’m—”

“I know,” Aziraphale said, low. He was seated on Crowley’s cock, unmoving, a damp sheen of sweat on his forehead, hair curlier where it was soaked through, and his cheeks were flushed with warmth. He looked down at Crowley, bright and delighted and scattered with sunlight.

Crowley didn’t know what else to ask for, what to say. He was so close, but so far away, too. He could feel the tide of pleasure, a dark and consuming thing, rising higher and higher, but he couldn’t see the clifftop anymore, couldn’t find it in himself to seek the edge and step off it. He felt like it would just keep going, swallowed by the waves of his arousal, an ever-increasing, ever-widening chasm of desire with no end, and he could only surrender himself to it. 

“Open your eyes, love.”

Crowley opened his eyes, not realising he’d closed them, and found the vision of Aziraphale above him watery and shimmering. As he blinked, tears eked out from the corners of his eyes to mix into the salt-sweat of his hairline. “Yes,” he murmured, suspended, exhausted, grateful.

Aziraphale smiled, and reached out to press his fingers to Crowley’s lips. “Alright,” he said, tender, commanding. “Come for me, love.”

And like a wave breaking, Crowley came. He didn’t buck up and thrust into Aziraphale’s heat, couldn’t move at all, could only let himself be dragged inexorably under, torturously slow, subsumed into an eclipsing darkness that became, like a sunrise, a brilliant surge of blinding white light, a shudder of ecstasy through his whole body.

“_Darling_,” Aziraphale was whispering, rocking his hips back and forth, clenching and releasing his muscles around Crowley’s pulsing cock, milking his orgasm from him, deliberate and unyielding, and it was like bursting through the surface of a river, the sensations bright-sharp and exquisite.

“P-plea_se_, oh please oh please, oh _pleassse_,” Crowley hissed, ragged and wrecked and trembling, unable to pull away, not sure if he wanted to say _stop_ or _more_, feeling everything, too much, just enough, greedy and wanting and satisfied and spent.

And then Aziraphale slowed, and he kissed Crowley, lips surrounding his exhalations and moans, drawing his protests and pleas away, quietening him, until the only sound was the wet press and release of mouths sliding together, soft and slow, into silence.

\---

Some time later – an indiscernible, unspecific stretch of it, lost in its passing to sleep and semi-consciousness – Crowley awakened in Aziraphale’s arms.

“Morning,” Aziraphale said, voice a soft, sleepy blur.

“Is it?” Crowley looked out of the window. It was light out, but he wasn’t sure if it was later the same day, or if it was the next one, or the one after that. He felt like he was coming out from hibernation, a dragging weight diffusing, like earth and mud falling away from him. 

“Could be afternoon,” Aziraphale conceded. He rolled onto his back to pick up the engraved silver pocketwatch that sat on his bedside table by the chain, eyes squinting as it swayed slowly. “It’s half four.”

“Still early.”

“I don't believe by any human standards that counts as _early_.”

“Just as well we aren’t human, then.” Crowley curled up against Aziraphale, nosing at his chest, enjoying the rough tangle of dry hair against his cheek. “We can stay in bed as long as we want. Time means nothing.”

“It means _Antiques Road Trip _is on.”

Crowley let out a disbelieving bark of laugher, and curled into Aziraphale tighter, inordinately fond, the brightness of it like the burn of embers in his chest. “We have _iPlayer_, angel. You can catch it later.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Aziraphale said, easily. He drew his arm around Crowley’s shoulders and let his hand rest on Crowley’s head, fingers trailing gently through snarls of long hair, soft and patient and unburdened. “We have all the time in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone in this fandom for being so kind & inspiring. come say hi [on tumblr](https://focusfixated.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] to steal light from dawn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21182168) by [Gorillazgal86](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gorillazgal86/pseuds/Gorillazgal86)


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